Warehouse
by Who Shot AR
Summary: A collection of drabbleish fics on varying topics.
1. the fall of a sparrow

Untitled drabbles, a sort of cleaning-out of my collection. I hope you find some use in them.

* * *

He doesn't believe there's a providence involved, special or otherwise, with this--but he can feel himself slipping, and if it must happen, this is an appropriate close to things. Cal is safe, Cal is near, raging at him and everyone around them even as he grips his hand, and the battle is done for now; Cal is the only fight left in the clearing. Goodfellow looks on, his mouth as a line carved in granite, and Promise—

Promise is still trying to staunch the flow of blood, cradling his head in her lap and snapping orders that will do no good. They are too far away from help, and the world is blanching white and cold. He gives Cal's hand a weak squeeze, tries to grind out an "I love you" meant for both of them, but it doesn't quite take in precisely _those_ words—but he is forgetting the meaning of sounds and can finally think only in terms of the warm leather against his cheek and the calloused vise of a grasp on his fingers.

It is the best he might have hoped for.

-

Many years later, far from a city she could no longer bear to visit, she watched the last dregs of the sunset drain away from the twilit sky from a wide window a dozen stories above the street. Another metropolitan, smaller, one in which the occasional star could be picked out, but far enough from the vast, muddy wilds of her earliest memories that she could separate herself along with her current residence.

Niko's shadow stayed on her long after they parted, somehow lurking in the way she spoke, fought, glided past the unwitting. His gaze had never truly left her form.


	2. your lucky colour

With great thanks to Neil Gaiman for the fortune.

* * *

We were at Coney Island, me for some hardcore hotdog eating and Niko because I was going. There wasn't really too much to do this time of year; the dead of winter isn't exactly prime time for going to the amusement park. Not really prime time for hotdogs, either, but there was a place that had good ones even when it was around freezing and even spending an hour and a half on the subway wouldn't deter me.

Niko suffered all of this with good grace, and even got some grading done on the train. We ate--or I did, and made an extra show of relishing it whenever he made a mystery meat comment. It was all kind of out of season, and maybe a little forced on both our parts, but it wasn't bad. The Coney dogs were great.

There was one of those automatic fortune-tellers near the hotdog place, and I dragged Niko over to it. C'mon, it'll be like _Big_, weak cracks like that, so it felt more like old times. I put in a couple coins, it waved its robotic arms around inside its plexiglass box, and it spit out a piece of paper.

_Your lucky number is two. Your lucky color is dead. Motto: Fidelitate Coniuncti._


	3. achoo

Try and tell me that Thurman shouldn't be taking more advantage of Niko's apparent werewolf allergy. Go ahead and try.

* * *

Turns out the Kin is just like Mafia in more ways than one. Crime syndicate, yeah. Drama worthy of a fuzzy remake of The Sopranos, yeah. All that stuff about you wearing cement shoes is different, because cement's not edible, but basically, it's all the same, no matter the species. And I knew all that, but the biggest reason they're the exact same damned thing, if movies taught me anything?

Once you've messed with them once, you're never going to stop running into the fuckers.

Not that we were family. No, the Don Furleones of their world would rather have us for a snack than do us favours on their daughters' wedding days. But even after we infiltrated and betrayed them and killed one of their bosses, here we were, talking to another one. It was treacherous ground, but we had some ammo that swung the power balance nearer our favour. Like the fact that we completely decimated the Auphe a year ago. And actual ammo.

It was going well so far, for what it was: a conversation about crime with a guy who knew all about it and had the pointy teeth to reinforce the message. He was slick, I was sullen, and Niko...well, Niko was Niko. Which usually involves being a serious badass, but today was undercut by the fact that we were dealing with a werewolf whose family tried to focus on the wolf end of the name. Inbred for wolf genes to the point of being unable to switch to the fully human side of the spectrum, he had some impressive tufts of charcoal-coloured fur sticking out of the collar of his suit in addition to the over-developed canines.

With unchecked furriness comes unchecked wolf dander, and this was no exception. The cramped office didn't help matters, nor did the fact that we had apparently showed up in the middle of shedding season. It took a lot to bring my ninja brother to his knees, and while his allergies wouldn't be enough, they could throw a wrench into this _ass kickers of the supernatural world_ image we were trying to cultivate.

In the middle of one of the boss's sentences, Niko sniffled. Not very loudly, and the Kin boss didn't seem to notice, but it was a red flag that we better wrap this up soon; another ten minutes, and he might start sneezing. I glanced over at Niko. He caught my eye and gave me a withering glare, then turned his attention back to our new friend Sharp and Pointy across the desk.


	4. when dialogue alone is enough

"_That which doesn't kill me makes me a badass_, huh, Cyrano?"

"Keep up the quips and we're running ten miles today instead," he said mildly.

"You're shitting me."

"Only one way to find out, little brother."


	5. sleeps in pearls

If you wear your life's worth around your neck, you can run at a moment's notice.

* * *

Evenings found us walking together in Central Park, talking about past, present, and future. As of late, it was often past, and often Promise's. The bleak smiles that had sometimes accompanied her stories of life in plague times never seemed far from her face, but she spoke candidly.

It was in bed one night, when a particularly long strand of black pearls, looped twice loosely around her neck, rested between her breasts, that I asked her why. Why it was that she never came to bed unadorned.

I received a sad smile in return, and she shifted in my arms to look up at me. There we sat for several moments, as she chose her words.

"Because it's decadent," she finally said, idly rubbing a pearl between her fingers. "It's so ostentatious that it couldn't be understood as anything else."

What she did not say, what lurked within her words, was clear; it was written in the dark violet of her eyes. Promise sighed, breaking our shared gaze, and her face disappeared behind a curtain of sleek hair.


End file.
